Grand Lido Braco

June 14, 2003

By Becky

We're back from our 4th consecutive trip to Braco in 4 years and will make this brief to try and cover the great things that stayed but mainly the new things.

Carl, Tyrone were joined by Jolene,Steve and Hioka on the entertainment front. Tamika was around in the mornings at the front office and behind the scenes in the entertainment staff room. Tamika helped pick up the pace at the Street Party and Carl was on vacation much of the week with Tyrone now a supervisor and floating. The result was that Steve , Jolene and Hioka tried to keep up the activities. This was the biggest downward trend if you really enjoy the high energy and fast paced games that Tamika, Melanie and Carl used to carry on. There was never a mixology or pool olympics the whole week on the a/n side and fuzzy duck wasn't fuzzy anymore. I spoke with older staff about these comments on Fri 6/21/03 and heard that all 3 being relatively new with Carl gone maybe had an effect and that she was certain they would catch on. An example was a congo line that started in the PJ party that was sent out into the street with no staff member leading it ( the line fell apart in 6 feet). I think the new staff were confused and thought they needed to stay inside to add to the rear of the line. This was only an example but indicative of not knowing that mixology is better staffed when a sizable fun drinking group is around the bar and not when everyone has had a big lunch and is floating around etc.

Jolene and Hioka were great dancers and interacted well with 2 or 3 guests at a time.

Victoria Market now has carafes of coffee on the table NICE

A/N clubhouse had large urn of coffee and pastries each morning

nude luncheon is both Tue and Thurs.

Nice large crowd that week at the a/n side

No kids from high school

the reusable Pepsi bottles (memorable by the obvious wear) was replaced by plastic and bottled water was all around. Nice but getting very modernized

Pool. beach and all areas were nicely done.

Colette in front office very nice and professional

Daniel in watersports headed up most of the volleyball with fun and patience.

The resort chiropractor was a bit of a steamroller determined to enjoy swimming in the a/n pool and sitting around the bar in her one-piece bathing suit which quickly turned part of the a/n side to clothing optional as some women felt inclined to put their bottoms back on while she was there. She said she had been doing this during her whole working vacation. Luckily she stayed only about a half hour and spent it explaining to guests why she should wear her suit while enjoying the a/n side (she was not actually working but just getting away from the textile side-she didn't appear to be there to conduct business. While she said she did this daily I only saw her once for her laps and reported the disruption when it occurred. On Tuesday she bullied her way onto the nude snorkeling trip wearing her suit as she went proclaimed to the group that she had missed her textile snorkel due to rough waves and would only accompany the nude snorkel if there were no objections. It was a bulldozer technique that worked and turned the nude snorkel trip to clothing optional as she managed at the pool. After all it was her vacation too.

Disco music was loud enough but didn't send us looking for ear plugs as 2 years ago.

60 and 70's night did not really have period music but was Garfield's dance hall stuff as usual over 4 years (if you want old music which staff had at the trivia games) just make it known and he accommodates.

Toga was tremendous

PJ was the best attended in our 4 yrs with great a/n style costumes

Food and Bev manager (Keith Samuels) was out and about speaking to guests at different meals during the week and is very interested in making certain everyone is happy with the quality and service (his work is fantastic)

Street party was beautiful. (Prime Minister was flown in on helicopter) He didn't speak but such were the reports. There were a few dignitaries but they stayed on the textile side and didn't try to take over anything and you had to look for them to see them.

The guests as usual on the a/n side made our vacation the wonderful time it was. With so many there was never a time you couldn't have a wonderful conversation, a great dance partner or dinner partner.